While I’ve run many games over the years at this point I run far fewer – and still fewer than I own. I like supporting both game companies whose products I like and Indie games that I either think are a cool idea or send a good message.
My fantasy game is currently using the AD&D engine and ruleset. It is set in the now multi-decade campaign setting for my fantasy games – the world of Uerth. It is, if I say so myself, a somewhat unique setting in that is based on a planetary setting – it’s a set of recursive interconnecting realms with it’s own unique cosmology that has it’s roots in some of my very earliest D&D games. I have also run it with 5e, a heartbreaker homebrew for years, and even a couple of very limited trials with other games systems (Thieves Guild and Palladium Fantasy primarily) – that said a house-ruled 1.5e AD&D seems to be the best match.
But I also run a Call of Cthulhu game occasionally. It’s a very pulpy setting using elements from a series of old stories and serials from that era, so in addition to the Call of Cthulhu 7E rules I’m also using the Pulp Cthulhu rules as well. Over the years I’ve run Classic Era, Gaslight, and Modern – plus I’m a huge fan of Delta Green – but my last “pre-campaign” was set in Paris during Great War with the Investigators playing members of the American Expeditionary Force, setting up the current campaign set in Chicago.
I also run Cyberpunk 2020 and Traveller. For years I ran a hybrid game that I set in a vaguely canon Traveller universe but using the CP2020 rules, I switched over to an adapted Cephesus Engine (basically an mixed Classic Traveller and Mongoose Traveller SRD) and finally breaking down and fleshing out my own campaign based on a more Proto-Traveller setting rather than the full glory that is the canon Third Imperium – but usually with a crazy level of space opera rather than the more hard-scrabble Traveller setting. If you’ve ever read Daniel Keys Moran’s Tales of the Continuing Time that’s what my Traveller game’s vibe is.
For Cyberpunk 2020 I simply love the classic Night City setting along with the larger world as written up in canon, even if some of the flavor text of the game has been superseded by the real world. While the game was essentially a dead property (though I’m looking forward to the 2077 computer game) I’m pleasantly surprised by Cyberpunk RED – it seems like the same sort of evolution that CP2020 was from CP2013, which means basically compatible. Cyberpunk 2020 was very, very popular there for awhile it’s kind of dead now, but RED seems to be getting some play again. That said, there is whole ton of stuff on the Internet for it.
The last game that I (and my spouse) ran the crap out for awhile there was a modern occult-horror game we called “Chicago Unseen.” We used 2e World of Darkness rules (mainly Mage) for years before we were finally crushed under the weight of that utterly broken system (and attempts to make sense of the bewildering and conflicting canon). We tried to use the 2e Witchcraft / Armageddon (Unisystem) rules and adapt the heck out of them, but the system is different enough from WoD that it really lost some of the special sauce that made it “Cicago Unseen” – the current plan is to start with M20, and basically ignore the canon in favor of our own metaplot and setting details (so, honestly, kind of like what I did with my Imperium game RE: Traveller canon)
Fleur du mal 